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Nicole Sykes

17 Nov, 10 tweets, 3 min read

Now 4 months into working in the charity sector and… boy. Those 5 years I spent sarcastically muttering at the void about government needing better partnership with and support for business… I didn’t know how good the private sector had it. THREAD (1/10)

At every corner during the Covid crisis, financial support schemes have been designed for the private sector and (with the noteable exception of the £750m fund) charities have to make do with it. But it’s like charities have been handed their big brother’s oversized jumper (2/10)

Furlough works if you run a brewery chain. Send staff home and claim back their salaries when pubs close and orders dry up. But it doesn’t work it you run a charity providing support to families of alcoholics, seeing rising need and unable to bench your teams to save costs (3/10)

@ProBonoEcon

A luxury handbag firm can take a risk on an interest-free covid loan, but a small domestic violence charity cannot bet the house against future donations to do the same. Yet are told it’s a solution. @ProBonoEcon reckons just 7% of charities have been got covid loans. (4/10)

Almost every curry house and betting shop in the country has been able to access five-figure grants, while a fraction of cancer charities and community support services have been eligible for similar support. (5/10)

And let’s linger on those grants (local authority distributed grants to retail, hospitality and leisure vs government fund for VCSEs) for a hot second because they show the disparity incredibly well on 3 key factors.
🏃‍♀️Speed
⭕️ Hoops
⚖️ Scale (6/10)

🏃‍♀️Speed 🏃‍♀️
Those grants for biz got out basically immediately in April. Gov money for charities has been allocated in tranches, going to trusts/Lottery/foundations etc. to distribute.
That means £tens of millions still won’t have reached frontline services 8 months later. (7/10)

⭕️Hoops⭕️
Charities have to apply for that 💰, investing time in meeting different requirements and making their case many times over to different funds.
Gyms & cafes had to give their postcodes & bank details. (Not to advocate for no process, just to highlight difference) (8/10)

⚖️Scale⚖️
The pot for charity grants totals £750million.
Tesco got a £585million tax cut from the Chancellor through its business rates relief alone. (9/10)

And let’s not pretend we’re talking about something small we can ignore. Charities employ about as many folk as financial services, generate £200bn in value each 📅 (~10% of GDP), and we ask them to run our lifeboats & cure chronic diseases. So… feels like this matters? (10/10)

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More from @NicoleSykes_

Nicole Sykes

@NicoleSykes_

13 Aug

Yesterday’s GDP numbers showed a wee uptick in June, but we’re all still expecting jobs to keep bouncing down the rocky hill for a long while yet. Some of the reasons are obvious -end of furlough, second wave- but, in case of interest, some of the other less obvious ones: (1/6)

1. JRS/loans were designed for firms facing immediate loss of demand. But a bunch will experience a lag eg. The visual effects artists still able to work on film shot over Winter over Spring. But once processed, there’s nothing new to work on & help is less useful/withdrawn (2/6)

On a larger scale is fashion. There’s a debate raging about the wasted stock that was never sold this Spring. Reselling in Spring 2021 would strip work from fashion designers and manufacturers. One solution to drag it out rather than create new gap (3/6) drapersonline.com/news/is-covid-…

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Nicole Sykes

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18 May

So you’re a CEO trying to run a business from your study. Your husband’s looking after the kids for the afternoon, you miraculously have a spare 5 minutes. With the news about negotiations, Brexit has been nagging at the back of your mind. What are we doing on that again? THREAD

You start emailing the lead of your Brexit planning team. Damn. They’ve been seconded onto your coronavirus team because crisis management skills are useful.
After 15 minutes of digging you give up, ask your PA if they can find the plans, call your CFO about the latest figures 2/

4 virtual meetings about face mask procurement and the rising mental health issues of your staff later, at least one and half of the kids are asleep. Your email pings with a file from your PA containing your old no deal plans. You open it. Swear again. 3/

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Nicole Sykes

@NicoleSykes_

1 May

Brexit has started to be A Thing again. Which is weird. But I’m told it’s my job to… you know… engage with it. So. Storytime.

Companies have obviously been dealing with the much bigger fire that is a global pandemic and the many resulting crises.
(1/something)

Turns out “all my customers are shut, all my suppliers are shut, I’m shut, how do I pay my staff/rent/bills?” is a more important question than “what about diagonal cumulation?” Also if your firm goes bust in May you care less about possible non-tariff barriers from January (2/)

But some firms have are now started to turn some thoughts to the topic again. So.
Here are three things that keep coming up on how coronavirus interacts with the UK-EU FTA negotiations from a business perspective: (3/)

Read 10 tweets

Nicole Sykes

@NicoleSykes_

5 Oct 19

This idea that businesses doing everything that they can to prepare for no deal and as such will be fine and dandy seems to be pretty persistent, so let’s have a look at 10 sectors’ preparedness – some more commonly known, and some where less attention is being paid (1/x)

(Dearest members, forgive me for a few sweeping generalisations here as I try to summarise what I know is very complex and nuanced, and varies on your exposure, business structure etc etc in 560 characters) (2/x)

💸Financial services💸
Preparedness: Arguably the 1st sector to swing into action, with its regulators demanding completed hard Brexit plans waaay back . They’ve spent £4billion preparing, but worked hard to reduce job moves OUT of the UK, creating new jobs in the EU (3/x)

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Nicole Sykes

@NicoleSykes_

30 Sep 19

Ah, I see we're going to be talking about business preparations for Brexit again today.
A reminder. Preparing for Brexit isn't necessarily good for the economy. And doing everything you can to prepare for Brexit, doesn't mean your business won't be hurt by the fallout (1/7)

The clothing firm that distributes their tshirts & jumpers round Europe from the Midlands. The only way they would have to avoid tariffs/delays into the EU is to move their distribution there. Moving jobs from the UK, something they don’t want to do. Readiness = jobs lost (2/7)

The Northern Irish company near the border that has been asked to do security checks in case of civil unrest. It’s disquieted their US investors and put them off putting more money into the company. Readiness = less investment (3/7)

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Nicole Sykes

@NicoleSykes_

21 Aug 19

Been thinking a lot about tariffs this week.

Because we’ve been on a journey with tariffs right? (1/9)

They were kind of the first thing people understood were economically bad in Brexit. We’ve had the pretty huge offer of zero for zero tariffs in an FTA early on, the curveball of the no deal tariff schedule and the Article XX1V nonsense, all set against the US-China drama (2/9)

And the arguments are so well-rehearsed I could vomit with boredom.

“The average EU tariff is only 3%!”
“Yeah but on food it’s 22%”
“Tariffs don’t apply to services, IT, medicines”
“But they do apply to 90% of our goods exports by value”
“They’ll be offset by the exchange rate"